Tag Archives: Art

It was the way she preferred to appear,
a streak through a magnetic photograph,
here and gone before you knew what had really happened.
She vibrated in that flash, before you could say hello,
between two thoughts, her mouth, if you were lucky,
a buzzing mist of kisses. She was in so many places at once,
you keep meeting her, traveling with time
like her favorite book in her pocket, going back into it.

She leaves you notes in side dimensions
just in case you forgot your keys one more time,
forgot why you entered the room, what you were looking for,
open the refrigerator with the opposite hand
and it is hanging there, a shopping list for gravity.

As if the sun was too slow to warm you,
as if there were too much time between now and now,
she was there so suddenly moments didn’t even have a chance,
before you could remember the world without her, sooner than light.

Street artist “Banksy” was arrested after a sting operation in which cops waited outside of his studio and followed him to the location.

Not only is he facing a slew of criminal charges, including counterfeiting, but his long-standing anonymity has been unveiled.

While revealing his identity to the public might have taken away some of his mystique, it says more that the authorities are taking away his privacy.

I want to know, what business, what shop owner, actually complained to the police that an internationally recognized artist volunteered work on their space? Are the police just so bored and overfunded that they have not much better to do? Do they take his political commentary as a personal affront?

Whatever the case may be, yet another nonviolent “offender” is off the streets, or, more specifically, on the court’s financial books.

In his interview, Banksy raises the point that marketers and advertisements are encouraged to make money by filling our public, visual, and psychic spaces with their peddling. But, once we take control, manipulate the world in the ways we see fit, then it is a crime.

I suppose that distressing reflection and satire is best left walled up in museums. No, the streets are for pushy commercialization and fad fetishes. The message is loud and clear, Banksy. This is their turf.

Money and I have an odd relationship. I never want to have to deal with it, but I’m always left needing more. I’ve never been great at handling my own money, and I’m always ever-so-willing to offer my art for free.

So something must be done. I’d be perfectly happy living the life of the impoverished artist if it wasn’t for the fact that living a comfortable life is a part of my happiness. It seems that, in my situation, the only way to not be concerned about money would be to have quite a lot of it.

But I could never see at as a virtuous thing just to have money. It is not an end-in-itself, not an ultimate goal. I do not look at people in a life of luxury and think “I wish I had that” and “I’m going to work as very-hard as I can to have that thing. Having things is boring. Every time I have a thing it immediately loses its luster. I am not into things, but I am into events.

Having events, or creating them, is costly. Sharing a dinner with a loved one, flying or driving long distances to see friends, even visiting the family, it all claws at the pockets. And maybe it’s my own fault. Maybe it’s fate, or bad luck, or some mechanic of the universe wrenching at my life thinking “once this thing is fixed, it’ll run like a dream.”

It doesn’t really matter. I have, on the whole, exactly what I want. Family, friends, positive and healthy relationships. I am, to be blunt, alive. Most of the time I don’t ask for much more than that. It is, after all, more than most of the human beings that have ever lived have. It keeps me happy.

But then there’s the crossroads, laying down in the middle of the clock with a gargantuan X. “What are you doing with your time.” Or, even more poignantly, “what have you changed in the world.” I want to change the world. Not in some grand, sweeping way. I’m not an open-to-the-public narcissist. I don’t even believe one person can change the world in any significant way (without support of the community).

A ripple. First an idea, it won’t go away. Then an action, with honesty, empathy, and virtue. Executed with humility. A butterfly effect of happiness. Smile at one person on the street, or two. Then they might smile at the bank teller, or say thank you in the perfect time of day to a worn-out cashier. Happiness is exponential.

But to be in the world costs money. Existential amounts of money.

I’ve had friends that have forgotten my name because I didn’t have enough gas to hang out any more. I’ve missed opportunities to experience and share art because I was trying to pull overtime and pay my utility bill.

It’s not a crisis. It’s just how it all starts catching up. Each bill falling one more piece of sand in the hourglass. I’m tired of deserts. I want rain. Not for greed. Not because I’m lazy. I’m just thirsty, I’ve been dancing as long as I can because in that dizzy moment I can sense something on the border of of perfection.

I’ll work hard for it. I’ll give you all I have. I know, in the end, all debts will be paid.

Here’s to life, and in it, freedom. May your Work and Fortune guide you through it.

If you need a crowbar to open your skull,
you probably weren’t yourself in the first place.
Sometimes it’s right to let a little light in. Your face
is a garden seeded with nail-flowers
and rosebush railroad spikes. The train
is pounding like a hammer with a mad god
dancing in the engine. There are roots in your palm
and an animal with a thousand changing faces
is eating from it slowly and staring up
at your new eye–its blasted visions
of dynamite–a metal taste in your mouth,
seafoam lips smooth as doll plastic,
the song of a revolver
screeching with needled records
grooved through your jaw, a purple smell
as you bend down to your knee, growing in place,
your head steeled with the blossom
of a blown-out dandelion, a new man.

There wasn’t much on the humans today, but I watched them anyway. It was the same old, boring, lazy crap that they tried to pass off as humanity these days, but I couldn’t help myself. It was a ritual, a tradition. It was expected of me. It’s what my father did, and my father’s father. It was unheard of to be brought up in a house without humans. It was obscene. Impossible. Absolute savagery.

Every day I would awaken, something inside me a sudden tick, my face humming with a brief and vibrant blue. I would watch the kids when they came home from school, waiting for their parents to get off work. The family gathered around me, eating out of bags, gnawing on the plastic colored cheese hardening on the pastel wrappers, and we would stare at each other. You really get to know a human if you stare at them for 10 hours a day. It’s almost like they have a soul, a flicker firing up behind the red glaze of their eyes. Sometimes, when they start talking to me, well, you’d think they were alive.

Occasionally they would offer me food, on game days, screaming obscenities and throwing me offerings of popcorn, chips, pretzels. I was never hungry, but I liked it. They stood and cheered around me, a primal beat of the chest, empty with echos. I felt like a pocket-sized Kubrik’s monolith. But in reverse–devolving. I could train them.

One human whipped a bottle at the wall, establishing dominance. Rolling Stone called it “gripping satire,” “riveting,” a “Turing de force.” I called it a Sunday afternoon. Besides, the special effects were terrible. If you paused him at 23 seconds, you could see the strings, the reflection of a cameraman in his belt buckle, his hat was on backwards. He said he did his own stunts, but you could clearly see his double, terrible wig and all. Some people call them easter eggs, I call it sloppy continuity.

I put the kids to bed. The parents lean against each other, make passing attempts at becoming aroused. They don’t do much of that anymore. They already have each other. I can tell.

They are terrible actors–waiting for the big break, trying to land walk-ons on a major channel, pretending to be in someone else’s lives, just trying to get noticed by someone powerful. One day they’ll be rich enough to become someone else.

Everyone gets 15 minutes before the commercial break. Hopefully it’s your favorite commercial. I heard, last year, that someone got paid 1 million dollars to watch a Super Bowl ad. It was the best he ever saw. He’s still talking about it.

Now his start-up company sells beer flavored toothpaste. He tried to invest in gambling therapy. He lost it all in a week. The odds were against him. It was good for the economy. He adjusted for inflation in 50 years and realized he only lost about 1,000 dollars.

I am a programmer. I sit all day against the wall. The back of my head is getting hot. My face is morphing with liquid crystals.

I used to be a story-teller. Move people. Now it’s just a puppet show. I tell them what they want to hear. I force-feed them, gluttons too full of despondency to lift a spoon to their mouths.The absurdity flashes around them. I swear, with the lights off, I can see it. Wiggling in the couch shadows, rolling pet hair up into balls, breathing dust, coughing up cigarette butts in the middle of the night, farting mold into the central air, eating the month-old leftovers, pissing on bathroom floor mats, it’s mouth full of microwaved aluminum foil.

The mother went to bed. It’s 2 a.m. The father’s mouth is open, the back of his throat bathing in my light. Let me sell you something–I am not a god, but I wouldn’t mind being treated like one. His hand is down his pants, in front of the privacy of the whole world. He is too tired to masturbate, but he tries anyway, with empty compulsion, still searching for the right channel.

I can’t sleep. I am always turned on, plugged in, jacked up. I can always feel the line noise feeding into me.

“This citrine-quartz necklace is only 555 for next 20 callers”

“…invest in the Christxmas gift that unwraps itself”

“This unfolding ladder extends through your apartment neighbor’s wall so you can finally walk up to each other”

Consumerism, etc. But his eyes are too blurry to see the numbers on his credit card. I am getting too old for this, too good.

I am a hypnotist. I will whisper in between the frames. I can see into him, through him, my plasma eye shifting with rainbows. I flash him the fake tits and fame-hungry moans of soft-core porn. This is my highest resolution.